CHAPTER XXX

…the last quarter of the waning moon, and the Western Wall is falling

A shape has been set. It has lain quiet, but not quiescent. Growing. Threading a way. Not a binding. An unloosing. A becoming…a map, Ahjvar would say, unrolling. A delicate thing, liable to destruction if discovered.

This is a pattern woven from a dance, the shaping of a sword’s edge, the binding of the sacred twigs of wizardry. No matter that the dance was never danced, the sword never drawn, the twigs only small grasses, knotted, blessed with the shaping of Ahjvar’s lean, strong fingers, swallowed, taken in, carrying what they wove. Growing. Thread by thread, weaving a way. Subtle. It must be subtle, slow, to unfold beneath the devil’s gaze.

To lay a trail, to map a way—grass. Let the way be made in grass. It is magic, human magic, and that is how human magic works.

Ghu thinks so, anyway. He has never really understood. But there are many things he has never really understood.

A god might not move beyond his land, but a god, they have proven, may be carried. A little. In a dream. A touch, and now…he, they, Ahjvar who holds to him, is held by him in the bonds of an ancient curse turned to promise, have hold too of this pattern they have made, this promise, this path…and the walls that surround and blind and the chains that bind and the weight that crushes…are grown thin. Are stretched, too far, nearly too far, forcing through walls and wards, combed away, peeled back—image tumbles image, a poet’s drunkenness.

They matter, even as a poet’s elusive truth. They are all truth, and nothing but words for what has no shape of words.

In a dream, he might reach. Then. Now. Though Ahjvar isn’t here, where the Blackdog hunts. Not now. Not yet. But the shape is set, and already he walks it (they walk it?) this lost soul—these lost souls.

Only let him (let them?) see, let the way he has made, they have made, he and Ahj between them, be understood. Let it draw the lost one home.

God might strain to reach to god—to reach to drowning man, fingers stretched, a reach too far, unbridgeable.

But he has a bridge beyond his borders. Heart within heart. The shape, the dance, the writing of the sword’s edge…most tenuous bridge, finger-touch. Warmth. Not fire. Sun’s warmth. Home warmth. Hearth warmth, embracing.

Let this be its time, the grass, the calling sky, the shape of a way.

Yes, now, with binding chains far-stretched, with that grim hold pared away by what the devil Vartu shapes as shield, god may reach to god, through god to man, to devil. May touch that threefold knot of souls and call.

In hope. Hawthorn. Cornel. Elder.

His brother’s enemy. Long hatred, which Sarzahn did not feel. He never had—this enmity was his brother’s affair and he did not understand, nor need to understand, its roots—but he had lost the warmth, the close embrace of his brother, as he crossed down out of the mountains, over the road. As if he moved into some thick and heavy place. With the waking noise of the Suburb about him, a stray dog, slinking in the last of the night’s shadows, he had felt his brother’s touch grow yet lighter, yet more remote. As if the seeping grey of morning might burn it off like mist on the spring grass.

It was bad that it should be fading, his awareness of his brother’s touch. It was a shield, a shelter. His brother’s arm about him, always. There was wizardry worked in Marakand, great wizardry, and woven through it ran other powers. A devil. A god.

It was a thicket of thorns, to bar the way to his brother, and he might yet slip through but they pricked and tore and shredded him, shredded the safety of his brother’s embracing arm,

Rope, fraying. Chains, rusting. Wire, stretched and overstretched…

Some…thing…stirring, stretching. Dangerous.

Crossing the city walls—that had been pain. Like being born, he had thought, and wondered at it, because women surely bore the pain of birth, but did not babies howl? Scored, clawed, struggling, where once he had swarmed up walls and leapt down them. But he had made it through, as his brother wished, and once within the city walls he had breathed again, and rested, and snapped at flies and at something like flies, buzzing, nagging, whispering within him, which irritated ears that did not hear it.

His brother would soothe such voices away, but his brother was out of reach, or he was, strange to think so. A faint and distant presence. Alarming. Almost panic. Almost he had turned, to run back to him, to be sure he was not dead, lost to this world, his brother, his—

…my god and my brother, you are a part of me…

It was for him to lead the way. It always had been.

He would do what he had come to do, and return. He would be in his brother’s sight again, safe under his hand, and all would be well.

No.

The woman was limp in his grip and the demon bear motionless, teeth bared, crouched to spring, which he would not. Sarzahn had only to bite—

And would she die? He thought not. Not so easily. His brother—had been waiting. His brother had thought he might follow, this time, where Sarzahn led, through what rents he made in devil’s working, the unseen shielding thorns that walled this city. Jochiz had meant to join him in this death—

To ride you, possessing—

—to savour this taste of blood in the mouth. Together they could have unmade the weaving of her souls, devoured—

No.

Been devoured? He, too?

Where did that thought come from? It felt like his own.

He was lost. He reached, frantic, heart racing, a lost child though frozen statue-still, and found it, faint, but true, his brother’s touch.

Sarzahn seized him, held fast to Jochiz. His safety. His rock to cling to, storm-battered shelter. He gathered himself to call, he would summon his brother, as he had when he had fought the dead man and been so inexplicably weak and failing, as if poisoned, as if his own bone and blood and nerve denied him—as if—

No. Turn away. Hear me.

Hear—

Not the devil. She did not move, did not speak, quiet and still as a puppy carried in its mother’s mouth. As if that might lull him, turn him from his intent.

Hear—

Sarzahn, he heard, so distant, so weakened, it might have been memory, but it was his brother’s voice, his touch, reaching for him. My brother.

And he snarled, with no words in it, but the word in his mind was, Lie. Jochiz, that is a lie.

His own paw, clawed on the earth, splayed wide, black-haired, black nails worn short from his running, from mountain stone, from—paw, hand, snake’s head tattooed, it twined with the cheetah up his arm, needle’s prick remembered, long, long work, building, building, smarting, aching, to something worse, to be endured…the ritual, the passage made, to be an adult and not a child, to be marked, declared for his god—Illusion. Dog’s paw.

His god. Sayan. His name was Sayan.

Do you hear, at last?

The air smelt of frost.

There was nothing to hear, but the devil Vartu…listened. As if she heard a song he could not. Her blood was in his mouth.

There was…not a song. A taste of bitterness, and he choked, he felt it, flooding through him, what he had swallowed, it burned in lines, in hooks and thorns such as fenced the city; it wrote in him; it raced deep; it seared—

Not him, but what was in him. Hooks and thorns? Chains.

It burnt them all away.

He was blind, and deaf, the world torn from him, he from the world. Lost. Darkness. Void. No earth, no sky, no light, no wind, no warmth.

He howled.

Jochiz was gone and he was lost, as he had been lost, when Jochiz found him, when Jochiz saved him, his brother—

My god, my brother—

He was held. He was—not alone. Never. Not in himself. He was—

They were—

We. My god and my brother.

Sayan.

He.

I.

Here, now, in this place I make again between us—and the voices that cried out in his mind, in his heart, the voices that had never been silent, that had raged and called to him unheard, buried deeper than the dead within, they were not this voice, they were silent, too, and they listened, he listened, with all that was in him, in this fearful place of nothingness. Like to like and what my own has woven, a bridge between—you hear me now. Like to like, by that bridge. Stand against him. Remember what you are.

Vartu. Shape of a name, taste of it. His enemy. His brother’s enemy. And he was Sarzahn, yes, and he must not trust, he must—his brother—

Was he your brother? A mild curiosity.

No. His—he found the shape of the idea, the thing it might have been, words.

Shield-bearer. Startled, considered that. The wrong word. Not a word of his people at all. The idea…not so inapt. Yes, shield-bearer, it might be. At his side. Following. Following into—

What was forbidden. What was—alien, overwhelming, they should not have, they should have debated, persuaded by other means—they had not understood—they had never dreamed what the world might do to them—

They sought to distract him. They sought to destroy. These voices, all of them—his enemies and his brother’s enemies and he thrust the words away.

No, Sarzahn. Listen. Can you hear? But it was not Vartu who shaped those words.

In his dreams, there were always voices. They whispered, but the wind took their words.

What wind?

There was wind. Sudden. Fierce. Clean.

The wind took him. He staggered upright. He hurt, every bone of him hurt, and he tasted blood, and he smelt her, Vartu. They had fought—

They had fought the devil Tu’usha. He and she. Together. Allies. But this was not that, not rubble, not ruin. Not the hard victory, Tu’usha defeated. Not Vartu standing by him, battered, weary, wounded and heartsick, telling him something—she—he could smell her but he could not see her—he needed to remember that day, the pain in his head, his eye, the woman, not the devil, yes, the beautiful, lean, dark, weary woman sitting in the dust by the caravanserai gate—

Gaguush. Her name had been Gaguush.

Gang-boss. Lover.

Wife. Waiting.

There was, distant in the darkness, a faint light. A warmth, and he was very cold.

Sun slanted, setting, throwing long spears of light through broken cloud, bright on the grass, and the purple dark between. Wind ran in waves, wind became horses, running…

Sheep on the hills, blue cattle, broad-horned, in the valleys. They raised their heads to watch the wind-horses running…

He thought he saw the wind-horses, running, though they were a myth older than this land, these gods, a myth, a poet’s fancy spun out of the rippling of the grass. He saw them, which no one ever had. Fleeting glimpse. White horse, and dark bay, running, running, running in darkness, silent, no ground beneath their hooves. They were with him here, in this emptiness that was where he…existed. Only that. Tall, swift horses of a breed he did not know, and they shed starlight, snowlight, like drops of water scattered fording some shallow stream. Fording the darkness, the night, the emptiness that was close and thick and smothering, muffling sound and sight and thought. He was the dog, chasing, hunting, through the darkness, to seize the horses and bring them down, because they were prey, they were enemy, they should not be in this place, and they ran, and ran, and kept ever ahead.

That was his brother’s—not his brother’s, his enemy’s thinking and he must outrun it, must leave it, shed it, let the thorns of memory comb it away and if he bled, let him bleed himself clean—

He had been running so long. Hours. Days. He had been running, following, yes, days, and he forgot; he saw them and forgot and every time he slept, every time he shut his eyes, he was in that place again, and the chase had no end, but always the end was in view, a glimpse, a perfection he could not reach. The horses ran to it, and he followed, and there was something in the darkness that reached, that dragged, that sought to hold him, but in the wake of the running horses it could not hold and all the hooks and chains were torn away.

There you are. All of you. Go—go!

She stood between him and his enemy. In the darkness, she was a fire, cold and silver, streaked with scarlet, a pillar of fire spreading into wings of flame and her back was to him and her sword held against—the emptiness, and what lay beyond it. The thing that hungered yet for him reached, flung jagged grappling claws that held him and he slipped from them to run.

Her blood was in his mouth.

No. The taste of earth and grass and sun, and the horses, a sure path through what he could not see.

Darkness shrieked, and hissed, and commanded. It fell away, flung from this place by cold light and a sweeping sword.

But he was racing the horses, and must follow where they led.

The island of golden light and grass and the sheep on the hills and the blue cattle and the long low ridge of hills was so far distant, a small thing, run as they would they could not reach it, run as he would—a world held in a child’s cupped hands.

Look,Pakdhala said, Trout said, Gultage said, Look, papa, look, do you see? Now do you see, at last?

Do you see the hills? Do you hear the black larks singing, and the killdeer cry? Do you smell the earth, the sun-warm clay, the grass bruised beneath our feet as we ride, the earth opened by the plough, the sweet rain laying the dust?

Do you feel it, opening for you, opening within you, unfolding…?

So close, the horses, running, running, and he could hear the thunder of their hooves, of his heart, exhausted, running, running, he had been running so long, chasing the horses, beautiful, wild, free, not enemy, not prey, only what he would be, and there was no scent of them in the air, only grass, and hay, and bitter greens, the taste harsh and choking in his mouth, his throat, and—

“Hawthorn for a god,” a man’s voice said, a stranger’s voice, soft but with depth to it, a voice to shape song with, quiet and close. He spoke aloud, as if he stood by Sarzahn’s shoulder. But he was running, running after the horses he could not overtake. Very matter-of-fact, the man’s voice, though his words were meaningless. What language he spoke, Sarzahn could not have said. “And cornel for truth.”

“Yes,” said a voice which was his own, and he did not know why he said yes, what he agreed to, because the words meant nothing.

“And the white-flowering elder tree last, brother. Which is rebirth.”

The horses—he was almost upon them, black-legged white and dark, dark bay, tall and fleet and scattering starlight as though they kicked up the winter’s first soft snow—were running, running, and they plunged from the darkness, the emptiness, through into light and he cried out— howl, cry—leapt after them, desperate not to lose them, not to be left behind, into the golden light, into warm sun and green grass and the singing of the black larks. The horses leapt again into the sky, creatures insubstantial as an image on water, running, running, further and further, dwindling away, snow beneath them, or perhaps it was cloud, and a cold wind rushed past, carrying the scent of pines, and they were gone. Holla-Sayan was on his knees on the hill of his god, and his god was dead and not-dead, an unborn ache beneath his heart; the hill was empty of what should be there. He was weeping like a child for death first met, on his knees, and a sword lay against his neck, hot breath and a predator’s fangs bared at his ear. His chest hurt, screamed its wounding, and even through the breast of his brigandine the hot blood was soaking, but the weapon that had dealt the blow had been spun out into chains and bindings, and now they were broken and gone. He bled, but the body—it knew what it should be, it healed itself, and Sarzahn snarled at the pain of it, the treachery of his lieutenant, of Jochiz. And still a sword lay against his neck.

“Is it you, this time, dog?”

But the devil did not wait for an answer, lifted the sword away and put her hand there instead, and then pulled him to her, arms around him, rocking him, and the bear huffed and nosed against him, licked salt tears; he was Holla-Sayan, cold and shaking and weak as if pulled from drowning, and he was held close within the compass of the bodies of his friends.

“Sarzahn,” Moth said. “So. Sarzahn. Cold hells, Holla-Sayan, it’s good to have you back.”

It was…yes. But…

Someone missing. Someone lost. He remembered—

Intensity. Rare laughter, pressing close in the night. A weight and a warmth in the curve of his arm.

Jolanan. Her name. He remembered. But he was exhausted beyond bearing, beyond thought. Months struggling in the darkness, months lost, screaming, straining to hear the voice, the voices that were his own crying out his name…

He needed to seek her. He had hurt her. Siege and war and Gods-damned traitor Jochiz…he needed to find her. Tell her—what? Didn’t know, what could possibly be said between them now. But needed, still—

But Jochiz at the gates of Marakand—

“Rest, brother,” the god Gurhan said. “Rest a little. Ulfhild holds the city walls.”

It was easy, to fall away into the welcoming darkness.

“Let him sleep,” Moth said, and Mikki put an anxious nose to the man’s face as he dropped himself down, falling almost, as if even to sit up demanded too much. Mikki huffed and lay down alongside him, for what comfort and warmth he might give. To watch over him. Holla-Sayan looked, in his human self, terrible. Dark as bruising all about his sunken eyes, and a grey pallor on him that made old scars stand out white like snow. The bloody wound in his chest did not help, though it looked to be healing. Hair all loose, knotted in rat’s-nests, and greying at the temples, which he had not been.

“Will he be well?” Mikki asked, trying to speak low, but the rumble of his voice made Holla stir. Only to press up against him, though, back to his ribs. Comfort, maybe, he took from that. Trust. Touched his muzzle to the man’s hair.

“Will any of us be?” Moth asked. “Ya, I think.”

She stroked his head, touched Holla-Sayan too, a caress as if she left a sleeping child, and went back to her runes and her warding. Adding signs. Singing, soft and low, to wind them into the whole, building, breath by breath, another layer into the defences of the god.